“Our Suffering with the Taxco Tribute”: Involuntary Mine Labor and Indigenous Society in Central New Spain

Abstract

Although the Spanish invaders of Mesoamerica were seeking gold, it was silver that made New Spain a populous central area of colonialism. Large-scale silver extraction began after 1550, and, by the end of the sixteenth century, bullion (some of it gold but most silver) represented 80 percent of early Mexico’s total exports. The industry would have its ups and downs, but by independence the colony had produced 300 million marks of silver, equivalent to about two and a half billion ounces.1 While the best known and most thoroughly studied source of this precious metal is the Mexican North, New Spain also had significant silver mining centers at its heart. Important among them was Taxco, usually ranked fourth or fifth in overall output; in 1590 its refiners used more mercury than their counterparts anywhere else, including Zacatecas. It was in Taxco that the celebrated don José de la Borda, known in the eighteenth century as “the first miner of the world,” made his fortune at Chontalpa, a silver mine that produced over two million pesos during its most productive years in the eighteenth century.2